d*******h
发帖数: 499 | 1 MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel
coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019,
nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the
University of Barcelona said on Friday.
The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed,
would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific
community thought.
The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid
-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run
tests on older samples.
They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41
days before the first case was officially reported there.
Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019
and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on
March 12, 2019.
“The levels of SARS-CoV-2 were low but were positive,” research leader
Albert Bosch was quoted as saying by the university.
The research has been submitted for a peer review.
Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary
Administration told Reuters it was still early to draw definitive
conclusions.
“When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more
samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological
problem,” he said.
There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities
with other respiratory infections.
“But it’s definitely interesting, it’s suggestive,” Villalbi said.
Bosch, who is president of the Spanish Society of Virologists, said that an
early detection even in January could have improved the response to the
pandemic. Instead, patients were probably misdiagnosed with common flu,
contributing to community transmission before measures were taken. |
|
